It's also much bigger in surface than's anything else

Aug 12, 2019 08:35 GMT  ·  By

Samsung just announced, in partnership with Xiaomi, the development of the first 108MP image sensor for phones.

Using smartphones to call people up is no longer the primary purposes for a long time. People use their phones, mostly, to take photos and browse the Internet. And while improving the browsing experience can only go so far, the photography component still has a lot of room for innovations.

Some of you might be skeptic about massive increases in the size of the image sensor, and for a good reason. You can always try to provide a camera with more megapixels, buy the small size of the phone constrains how big the sensor can be. And the more MP you squeeze out of a sensor, the more noise is going to produce.

It’s not just about megapixels

The new sensor is called ISOCELL Bright HMX, and it’s the result of a Xiaomi – Samsung partnership. Their goal is simple, and that is to offer users a way to take photos with their phone that would otherwise require a high-end DSLR camera.

Besides the sharp increase in resolution, the new ISOCELL Bright HMX sensor is also the first one to adopt a 1/1.33-inch size. In short, the larger surface lets the sensor absorb more light in low-lit conditions.

Samsung was also quick to answer some of the incoming questions by addressing them head-on. ”Its pixel-merging Tetracell technology allows the sensor to imitate big-pixel sensors, producing brighter 27Mp images. In bright environments, the Smart-ISO, a mechanism that intelligently selects the level of amplifier gains according to the illumination of the environment for optimal light-to-electric signal conversion, switches to a low ISO to improve pixel saturation and produce vivid photographs. The mechanism uses a high ISO in darker settings that helps reduce noise, resulting in clearer pictures.”

Of course, the new sensor is not just about taking photos. As it stands right now, a camera equipped with the new ISOCELL Bright HMX allows for 6K (6016 x 3384) 30-frames-per-second (fps) resolution without having to compromise the field-of-view.

The one thing that’s missing from Samsung-Xiaomi announcement is the information about which phone is going to be equipped with this new sensor, but that will probably get leaked at a later date.